The World Jewish Congress honoured on Monday the civilian victims from the Bosnian northern town of Prijedor, recalling that those killed were the victims of ethnic cleansing of Bosnian Muslims and Croats in the war of the 1990s.

In a video containing disturbing images from the concentration camps, the World Jewish Congress said the ethnic cleansing and crimes against humanity were committed by the political leadership and military forces of Bosnian Serbs.

“After the town of Prijedor was taken over in April 1992 by Bosnian Serb forces, thousands of non-Serb civilians were confined into the Omarska, Keraterm, and Trnopolje camps. The camps were established as an intentional discrimination against the non-Serb population and part of a plan to expel non-Serbs from the Prijedor municipality,” said the representative body of over 100 Jewish communities worldwide.

The White Ribbon Day marked on May 31 is the day when Prijedor and the world remember the civilian victims including 102 children in peaceful walks or simply wearing a white ribbon tied around their arms. The symbolism comes from the order of Bosnian Serb authorities in 1992 issued to all non-Serbs in Prijedor to put on the white ribbons and mark their houses with white sheets, which was followed by the mass killings and prison camps.

The World Jewish Congress reminded that over 3,000 men and women were detained in the “notorious Omarska camp” between May and August 1992 in “brutal conditions.”

“They were murdered, raped, sexually assaulted, severely beaten, starved, and otherwise mistreated,” the WJC said.

It stressed that there were numerous mass graves in the Prijedor area including the Tomasica mass grave that, with the remains of 360 Bosnian Muslims and Croats, is believed to be the largest mass grave from this war.

“Prijedor had one of the highest rates of civilian killings committed during the Bosnian war, after the Srebrenica massacre. Since 2012, activists commemorate the victims on May 31. until today, the families of the victims in Prijedor are not allowed by the authorities of Republika Srpska (Bosnian Serb-dominated entity) to set up a monument for the victims of ethnic cleansing”, said the World Jewish Congress.

Thank you to our friends from @WorldJewishCong for helping raise awareness about crimes against humanity perpetrated against the non-Serb population of Prijedor. ICTY also ruled that acts committed in Prijedor, among other municipalities, constitute actus reus of genocide. https://t.co/tZO6XDcUwH

— Emir Suljagić (@suljagicemir1) May 31, 2021

Emir Suljagic, the head of the Srebrenica Memorial Centre, thanked for the gesture.

“Thank you to our friends from @WorldJewishCong for helping raise awareness about crimes against humanity perpetrated against the non-Serb population of Prijedor,” he tweeted.